Highlighting the importance of sanitation around the world, St Thomas More Catholic School have twinned their suite of toilets across the school with four toilets across the continent of Africa.

They have donated money to ‘Toilet Twinning’ a charity ‘kicking up a stink’ to bring to the forefront that 1 in 3 people across the world don’t have somewhere safe to go to the toilet - that’s 2.3 billion people. Every minute, a child under the age of five dies because of dirty water and poor sanitation. Around half the people in the world have an illness caused by bad sanitation.

Toilet twinning is a water and sanitation initiative with the tag line ‘we are flushing away poverty, one toilet at a time.’ They promote community-led total sanitation to improve sanitation, hygiene education, and behaviour change, ensuring projects are sustainable, full of dignity and self-respect.

School Business Manager Scott Brierley said ‘We have benefitted from a renovation of toilets including painting and new floors; we ‘twinned’ to raise awareness, to help others have improved sanitation and also to remind our staff and students of how fortunate they are - in 47 countries, less than half of the population have a proper toilet to use. We have had our toilets twinned with four toilets in the Central African Republic, Malawi, Uganda and Democratic Republic of Congo.’